1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus including storage means for storing user information, a data processing method, a computer-readable storage medium on which a program is stored, and a program.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus is known which includes a printer for printing in accordance with image data input from a scanner and which also includes a communication interface that allows it to receive a print job from an external apparatus such as a host computer by communicating with the external apparatus. Such an image forming apparatus is usually called a multifunction apparatus.
Some image forming apparatuses include data storage means such as a hard disk serving as an external storage device, and a print job received from a host computer is stored in the data storage means. After authentication based on ID information or the like is performed, if a print command is issued via an operation unit, printing of the print job stored in the data storage means is performed in a secure manner.
Personal information is also stored in storage areas (called box areas) assigned for use by respective users and used in various kinds of image processing (including facsimile communication, e-mail transmission, etc.) An example of such a technique may be found, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 11-119956.
In the image forming apparatus described above, when a user moves to another section of the same or different office because of a personnel change or the like, it is necessary to delete personal information stored in a box area assigned to the user and store it in another image forming apparatus located in the new section.
To delete user's personal information including information inaccessible by other users from the box area assigned to the user, the user has to retrieve information and delete it record by record by performing an operation on the operation unit until all user information is deleted.
Because retrieval and deletion of data are performed manually, deletion is very inefficient. Furthermore, in manual retrieval of data, it is difficult to find all data, and there is a possibility that some data remains without being deleted. This causes confidential information or personal information of the user to be exposed to third persons. This is a serious problem from the point of view of security.
If some data remains in a box area without being deleted, the storage resource of the external storage device is needlessly occupied by the remaining data without being released.